We bet you're intimidated just looking at it. Thinkstock/Ingram Publishing

May 21, 2013

ADVERTISEMENT

Sign Up for

Our free email newsletters

10 things you need to know today

Today's best articles

Today's top cartoons

The good news newsletter

The week's best photojournalism

Daily business briefing

Spring seems like such an arbitrary time to organize your life, clean your closets, and generally get your house together. Still, I always hold out hope that when spring comes I will undergo some sort of metamorphosis and tackle my growing paper piles.

You see, Future Me loves this sort of thing. She tackles paperwork with passion, she scrapbooks, she RSVPs on time. She carries tissues in her purse! She is detail oriented and dangerously fit. I just adore her. But today all I have is Present Me.

Present Me doesn't really mind the great mass of paper strewn around my kitchen. But I suspect my Present Husband does, so I try. My version of spring cleaning is straightening the piles and then remarking to myself what nice straight edges I've made. Report cards, bills, insurance forms, and medical clearance forms that were due weeks and weeks ago have become part of my visual landscape.

But even tidied, those piles aren't going anywhere. They have a healthy pulse and a voracious appetite for reproduction. Every day, the mail makes its way inside, and the backpacks seem to vomit sign-up sheets, reminders, and sticky depictions of ladybugs. I eyeball one pile that is about eight inches high. How many paper-thin liabilities does it take to make a pile that high, I wonder? Future Me is proactive and full of enthusiasm for finding out. Present Me kinda wants a nap.

I know I'll have to tackle them all eventually, but the problem is that each piece of paper sets into motion a complicated chain of to-dos that seems like it's better suited for tomorrow than today. A simple camp registration form, for example, necessitates a call to the pediatrician to schedule checkups so that I can include a recent report on my kids. I look up the number, sit on hold, negotiate a post 3 p.m. time for all three of my children to come in, provided it's after baseball season and before tennis season and not on a Wednesday because of piano. I have to be extra friendly on the phone to convince the scheduler that I am not in fact insane. I hang up with a pit in my stomach, knowing that she's telling everyone I'm insane.

That task, completed in nine minutes and at great personal expense, is just the first step in getting that one piece of paper out of the pile. To the naked eye, that pile will still be eight inches high when I'm done. I try a different approach: I sort. I take the pile and make it into three less intimidating piles. The first is stuff that has to be dealt with or my water will be turned off and my kids will be in the house with me all summer. I label it Code Red and straighten it furiously.

The next pile is stuff that means something to my husband but not to me. I mark it "Tom," and put it out of my line of vision. I'm really getting somewhere.

The next pile is stuff that I should have dealt with but now it's too late so I can throw it out. (Rejoice!) It's the order form for the yearbooks, a flyer for a seminar I wanted to attend back in February, a request for me to make cookies for a bake sale that was yesterday, and a note home saying someone in my kid's class had lice. As these things seem to have worked themselves out with no involvement on my part, I sashay to the recycling bin and rid my self of three inches of paper, secretly happy that I forgot about the yearbook. It's just more paper, bound in cardboard.

Now I'm left with just a two-inch pile that's not my problem and my three-inch Code Red pile. I go back to the camp registration forms and see that they want me to provide my kids' T-shirt sizes. That really just involves looking at the ones from last year and going up a size, but they're all the way in the basement. So I pick up the next paper. This one's not so bad: I have to call Greenwich Hospital and schedule my mammogram. I hold it determinedly in my hand while I make tea. And then I put it down without calling because I have a great idea…

I decide to make a sub-category called Problems That Can Be Solved With a Checkbook. I tackle these and see that my pile is down to two inches. It's two inches of Code Red, but still, I've made some progress. Future Me is going to be so proud. And she can take it from here.